Expert: Shirley McAllister, CPP, PHR - 9/3/2008

Question
QUESTION: Our school (which operates under a court)with exempt employees (teachers) has just gone to a 4 tens work week.  All employees are required to track the 40 hours worked per week.  Here is the problem:  paid holidays that fall during the 4 tens are not counted as 10 hour days, but as 8 hour days, for both exempt and non exempt.  This means that everyone must either work 2 extra hours or take 2 hours of vacation in order to have the paid holiday.  Is this appropriate?  I don't think so, and my exempt staff are a little miffed at this treatment.  I am forced to nit pick over exempt employees hours and make sure they work 10 hours each day.

ANSWER: This is how it is at our company also.  The reason is that everyone is guaranteed 6 holidays a year.  That is 40 hours a year in holiday pay.  We cannot pay 10 hours to one employee and 8 hours to another. If we did we would be paying the 10 houred employees 16 extra hours a year.

That is why it is only 8 hours. It is a drawback to the 4 ten hour day schedule. Our people that work 10 hour days just use 2 hours of vacation time. The 10 hours schedule is a flex schedule benefit for them. For the benefit they have to put up with the drawbacks.

Shirley

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Well, it may be the way it is, but to me it is most interesting.  This is tough on my exempt employees, and they don't see it as fair, since they have to use vacation time or work the extra 2.  I don't particularly like hounding them to make sure they have 10 hours each day, and that they work the extra hours.  Seems like I am treating my exempt and non exempt in the same manner.  We get 10 paid holidays a year, and the interesting thing about all this is that the County and the Court have 2 different rules:  the County sees the vacation day as either 8 or 10, depending on your schedule of work.  The Court sees it only as 8, regardless of your work schedule.  In effect, though we fall under many of the county's personnel polices, we also fall under the Arizona Supreme Court/Yuma County Superior Court Policies, and they often do not match (and not to our advantage, I might add).I predict that the next employee satisfaction survey will not yield a happy result for the court.  Guess that is the price you pay for inconsistency. Thank you for your prompt answer...even tho I was hoping for a bit different opinion!

Answer
We had much debate over this in management in the early years of our company. We had a CPA firm come in an do an audit on our HR department and policies. This is one they picked on. Because it was picked on in the audit it went to upper management for debate. We had been paying 10 and 8.

The CPA said that the DOL could call it discriminatory because some workers were paid 10 hours and some were paid 8 hours for the holiday and that was not consistent. That all employees should earn the same amount of hours for the holiday as it was not an exempt or non exempt holiday or challenge as everyone gets the holiday.

Actually our employees were much happier when everyone got paid the same amount of hours as those working 8 hours felt they were being cheated out of 2 hours every holiday as they had to work 32 hours and the 10 hours scheduled employees were only working 30 hours.

The satisfaction factor goes both ways, you may find that there is a lower satisfaction factor in the salaried but probably a much higher satisfaction factor in the hourly.

Yes, they all count and even if they have not voiced thier opinion it is there.

Shirley